


to light up the skies

by themorninglark



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Crooked Kingdom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 16:55:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9133009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/themorninglark
Summary: "Wylan Van Eck," he said, "if you think I'm always going to choose you and your stupid face,every time—"The flutter of breath at his throat, the heart-aching brush of kind lips against his bare skin, made Jesper stop, set his gunfire soul ablaze and alight.On gambles, childhood songs, restless, reckless wandering, and coming back at the end of it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I finished reading Crooked Kingdom yesterday and then this came spilling out—
> 
> /lies down
> 
> (Title from the haunting, lovely ["City of Stars"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZAw8qxn0ZE))

 

 

As Jesper drew the curtains upon a garnet-red sky, closed his nimble fingers around brocade that smelled like perfumed roses and thought, _curtains! honestly! what even is their use?_ , he heard a lone discordant note ring out across the room.

Wylan, at the piano, said, "Teach me something beautiful."

Jesper did not have to turn to picture it. Wylan's curls in disarray, an oversized shirt hanging off his shoulders; fingers warming up like they ached to make something spark. _No,_ that was Jesper— _well_ , that was Wylan, more and more, these days—and Jesper knew he was a thoroughly horrible influence, but here was Wylan anyway, with beauty in his mouth.

He let the curtain slip from his hand with a rustle, leaned back against the dawn and smirked. "I'm always beautiful. What part of me do you want?"

Wylan's fingers danced a slow, lazy scale up and down the keys. The look he shot Jesper could have kissed him right off his feet, had he been half a step nearer.

Jesper crossed his arms, dug one heel into the wall and rocked lightly. "Okay, but _really_ , you've heard my entire repertoire of dirty tavern songs by now—I know they're all _showstoppers_ , but—"

"I was thinking," said Wylan, hands dropping into his lap, "I don't know any Zemeni songs. It would be nice to learn one from you… maybe something your mother used to sing to you."

"My mother," Jesper repeated, and Wylan pressed his lips together. His cheeks were flushed pink. It wasn't just from the light.

"She _did_ teach you to make a proper cup of tea," he said. His sudden smile was like frost melting in the sunrise, the thaw into dewdrops.

Jesper stared at him.

"What has tea got to do with music?"

Wylan raised one hand again, plucked a gentle chord from the morning's stillness. When he played, it was like the music found his fingers, not the other way round.

"I just thought she sounded like someone who knew about beautiful things."

To the sound of a few stray notes, hanging in midair between them like a glass-spun whispered breeze, Jesper stilled his fidgeting. He peeled himself off the windows and crossed the room.

When he sat down next to Wylan and opened his mouth, he was surprised to find that the words did not come, not immediately. What came was a pricking at the corners of his eyes, the smell of baking bread and the gold of the fields in the hot midday.

"Jes? Jes, I'm sorry," said Wylan, in a rush. "I shouldn't have asked—"

Jesper reached, inhaled. His ankle knocked Wylan's under the piano, where the pedals were; his hands came to settle on the edge of the bench, knuckles pressing right into the warmth of Wylan's thigh. He was real. He was here.

_Imagine that,_ thought Jesper. He closed his eyes and started to hum.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He was reckless. He wasn't _dumb_. There was a difference. Sometimes, it was a difference that Jesper himself forgot, made a hobby of forgetting; it was easier to excuse all of his mishaps with feigned stupidity.

Wylan never forgot, and Jesper remembered every time he was near. It made him feel like he was standing on the edge of a precipice. The sky awaited with open arms.

_You could do so much better than me._

"You're lucky you've _got_ me," he said instead, tipping his head back on the chaise lounge and dropping a fresh grape into his mouth.

"I know," said Wylan.

He wasn't supposed to say things like that. It drove Jesper up the wall with distraction.

Wylan's flute lay disassembled across his lap. He was cleaning it with careful fingers and rubbing alcohol that Jesper had made for him with a flick of his wrist. Wylan complained, at times, that his chemistry was growing rusty; but it was a complaint that rang shallow and they both knew it, and Jesper would grin as he cupped Wylan's cheek in his palm, said, _Fabrikators, they're nothing but trouble, aren't they—_

And Wylan, growing warm at his touch, would take Jesper by the collar and drag him down till he had nothing left to say, only breath to give and to keep giving, and giving, until all exploded into glorious starfire and orange blossoms beneath a clear, wide morning the colour of honest eyes.

_Never trust an honest man,_ Kaz had said. Those words nestled themselves in Jesper's chest now, a raw, tender, _told-you-so_.

Wylan took a shaky breath. At the sound, Jesper sat up a little straighter, twisted his neck round a fraction to face him.

"You didn't read me the market reports today," Wylan said.

Jesper picked another grape from the bowl, tossed it into the air and caught it between his teeth.

"Thought the shipping manifests would've bored you enough," he said. "You don't need to hear _everything_ every day. That's what clerks are for."

Wylan set his polishing cloth down on the table.

"You didn't read them to me because you lost money, didn't you? You were unlucky," he asked, evenly.

In that moment, the beat in Jesper's heart was a staccato, rushing tide; it was the lapping of wild waves over the pier, and he was a step behind, always behind.

"I have better lullabies to sing you to sleep with," said Jesper, making a grand show of a yawn as he sprawled out, legs draped obnoxiously over velvet upholstery like so many odd angles.

Wylan smiled, lifted his flute to his lips and played a quiet note. The tide calmed, stilled.

"I'm not _mad_. It's _your_ money. I'm just… annoyed you didn't tell me."

Jesper's lips twitched. "What, that I _lost_?"

Wylan waved a dismissive hand at him. "Please. As if _that's_ anything new."

"Well. I'm so glad you find amusement in my failed gambles," said Jesper, turning his gaze back at the gilded ceiling. From the corner of his eye, he saw Wylan shake his head.

"Saints, it's not like that. Look, I know this sounds terrible, but, Jes, if you didn't lose some…"

Jesper found that slow grin working its way back to his lips, the one that tasted like a slow burn, a gunpowder burn that came back to sting years later. Ashes to ashes.

"It wouldn't be fun, eh?" he said, glancing at Wylan and the tenacious tilt of his chin.

"And maybe, you wouldn't be satisfied," Wylan said.

There was only the slightest tremor in his voice, like a crack on a pavement that one might miss. And this was no secret, only a truth that Jesper knew he was sometimes afraid to speak, for they had lost some fears and gained some new ones, in the rebuilding of old lives, the threading together of scraps that were left and an empire woven boldly from silk-thin hopes. Well, they'd beaten worse odds.

"Maybe you're right," Jesper laughed, and Wylan's smile softened.

_Still—_

Over in the fireplace, the last embers lay dormant. A painting sat drying on an easel next to it, one of hyacinths and a lake that reflected pale, dreamlike clouds. Marya had finished it this afternoon, and Wylan had looked at it for a long time.

Jesper's palm tingled, burned again.

Before their eyes, the painting burst into vivid life on the canvas, as Jesper drew the colours from the pigments to the surface, made the oils shine vibrant like the flowers were coming into bloom all at once, and the sun was rising on the horizon.

"Like you said," Wylan murmured, "I'm lucky to have you."

Jesper curled his fingers into a fist. It was a different kind of grip from the kind he used around his guns. He held this like a bullet shaken loose, an echo rattling in his palm, and he could not find the words to tell Wylan how he felt in this moment, _alive_ , so alive.

So he said, airily, "Of course. I'm a gambler. I know about luck, Wylan… and I don't walk away from a winning hand."

He held Wylan's gaze steady, watched the blue sky brighten.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_You're not made for this, Jes,_ Wylan had said, and let him go, once.

Jesper had been too stubborn, too thick-headed to protest. He had tucked his pearl-handled revolvers into their familiar places in his belt, tossed a throwaway glance and a thoughtless wave over his shoulder at Wylan, who stood framed like a classical painting in the doorway of the Van Eck mansion, and said, _don't burn down the house when I'm gone._

Wylan's smile had lit up the pre-dawn hours, brighter than any explosion. The fuse that coiled in Jesper's chest smouldered.

The port at Novyi Zem looked breathtakingly unchanged. So did the farm. His father had not been home when Jesper leapt off the wagon and onto fields where he could have wept, falling to his knees till the sun and laughter found the familiar shape of him. A little taller, now; just a few more inches higher from the earth than when he'd left. He'd never felt closer to it, the scent of _jurda_ fresh as rain upon him.

Jesper did not weep. He found his way to the cherry tree instead, touched one hand to the soil, the bark, and said, "I wish you could have met him."

The rustling of grass, the pitter-patter of soft feet running free, sounded from over the knoll. _My little rabbit,_ whispered the wind in Jesper's ear. A sigh, a passing benediction. He'd always had hearing as sharp as his sight.

That evening, Jesper made dinner. He was better at it, now. The soup was less watery than his previous clumsy attempts, the bread not burned.

He remembered how his mother used to make it rise, reached inside him and did the same. The spark was a chord that thrummed, true and bell-like, calling him home to himself. Jesper put his fingers to his lips and thought of Wylan.

When Colm Fahey hung his hat in the doorway, hugged his son, held him by the shoulders at arm's length and said, _you look well, Jes,_ Jesper could only surrender, think, _Wylan was right. As usual._ He had needed to make this journey, so he could return, and leave and come back again, as many times as he had to.

_Just stop,_ Wylan had said, _breathe_ , and then he had set him free.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"How did you know I'd come back?" Jesper asked.

Wylan, running his hand across leather-bound spines, stopped and pulled out a book. He always knew exactly which one they'd been reading the day before, even if he couldn't make out their titles. It was the binding, he said; every book _felt_ different to the touch.

"I believed you would. I guess I couldn't know _for sure_ ," said Wylan, with a shrug. "But I figured, it didn't matter."

Jesper's eyebrows shot up.

"And here I thought you _cared_ about me," he said, closing the distance between them. He reached to trace the fine line of Wylan's jaw, came to rest at his chin and tipped his head up in the palm of his hand.

Wylan cradled the book in one arm, dropped it down to his side. The other found its way round to Jesper's hip, settled in the spot where he used to keep his revolver at all times. The weight was reassuring, familiar, yet altogether different. Wylan's knuckles were soft and imperfect, and they'd never gleam deadly in the moonlight the way those hard-nosed pearl handles would, but the warm thrill they sent up Jesper's spine was a world apart from the touch of his own weapons.

Wylan's smile was a faint blush on the corners of his lips. Jesper pressed a thumb to it, exhaled.

"I do. That's why."

"Are we going to have a conversation again about how you're cute, but also a whole loaded rifle's worth of crazy?"

Wylan's fingers teased at Jesper's belt loops, tugged him lightly forward. "Maybe. It's just… well, I know you can't stay still forever. You'll stay still if I tell you to. But I can't always tell you to. I don't _want_ to."

By the window, the lanterns flickered. Jesper thought he saw their shadows dance.

He slid his hand round to the nape of Wylan's neck, pressed his cheek to his temple, his mouth to the shell of his ear; he said, "What if I want you to?"

Wylan's silent laugh was a pulse that matched Jesper's, beat for beat against his chest.

"I don't want to," he repeated, insistent. "I'd rather know that _you_ chose to stay. Every time."

Jesper snorted. He couldn't help it, for if he did not give himself over to mirth, he might say something truly embarrassing; it was a terribly undignified noise to make, but he really didn't care, and Wylan had seen enough of him and his _indignities_ anyway.

"Wylan Van Eck," he said, "if you think I'm always going to choose you and your stupid face, _every time_ —"

The flutter of breath at his throat, the heart-aching brush of kind lips against his bare skin, made Jesper stop, set his gunfire soul ablaze and alight. This kiss, he knew, would leave a mark in him lovelier than any bruise, and Wylan grinned as he took a half step back, looking straight up into Jesper's eyes.

"Crazy. I know."

Jesper grinned back. He drank in the sight before him, remembered first impressions and what a fool he'd been.

Wylan was no lost princeling, no fragile _jurda_ blossom, there to be crushed by careless feet and hungry foxes. He was the stain it left on his fingertips, stubborn, sweet and lingering.

 

 

* * *

 

 

And as Jesper sang his childhood, here in their city of thieves and tides and starlit alleyways; _their_ city—

He thought, _I've already lost._

There was nothing _beautiful_ he could teach Wylan. This was a gamble he had tumbled into, knowing he'd never win; he had no grand arias and stirring operettas fit for a mansion with chandelier lanterns, with brocade curtains. They had been hand-stitched with scarlet tulips that wound all the way from the hem to the top. Jesper, who knew his way around a needle well enough, had seen that instantly, and marvelled at it.

All he had was this: a Zemeni folk song that tasted like tea and joy in his throat, on his tongue, and that soothing baritone of his that for some reason, Wylan liked so much.

So he sang. And a piano chord rang out in harmony, then another.

When Jesper opened his eyes, Wylan was smiling at him like he was the only beautiful thing in the room, and Jesper knew he was a shot in the dark that had found its target at last.

 

 


End file.
